Yesterday (29th of August) we had our first Belgian MySQL UserGroup (still need a catchy name!) meeting. I think it went great as we had quite a bunch, 14, attending.
The meeting room was arranged by X-Tend (www.x-tend.be) in their offices in Kontich (that’s between Mechelen and Antwerpen). We had a late start because some folks were eating at the Quick, some where still enjoying the X-Tend provided sandwiches and Kris had a late fight with MySQL Cluster.
For the first meeting I planned 2 presentations: one was giving an overview of MySQL AB, the company. The other one, as Kris Buytaert suggested, gave an overview about new features in 5.0 and 5.1. I also covered 4.1 features as they are/were important.
We had some good discussions there about various stuff. Of course the license came up, but it that was cleared rather quick as it was (I hope) understood. Also the patch contribution which is still in my opinion very low and I guess we have people out there really wanting to do that. Another discussion was about linking with shared libraries or using static binaries.
I think there is some potential about making this user group later on more interactive so we can discuss more problems or ideas people have. Maybe we can even talk a bit about politics and the use of Open Source in general and MySQL in particular in governmental instances and schools. One obstacle I see here is the language being used: we did it now in English, but discussions might go in Dutch or French or mixed which can be a pain.
As for the people attending: people working at universities, hobbyists, programmers and lots (if not all) folks from X-Tend.
For next meeting, we might get somewhere in Ghent, but we have no date or planning yet. I will plan with Kris. One thing I will talk about is MySQL Cluster, but definitely other stuff will be handled like WhatsNew or DidYouKnow or .. Just send ideas if you have!
I’ll post something later if I have more news about the next meeting.